How to run a loudest-shout contest
- Put the phone or laptop on a table and mark a spot about 1 m (3 ft) away. Everyone shouts from that spot, facing the microphone, because the distance changes the reading more than anything else.
- Press Start measuring. The Loudest shout panel shows this round’s highest level and the best so far.
- The first person shouts. Press Next round: their shout goes into the list with its maximum in dB(A) and its C-weighted peak, and the next round starts from nothing.
- Keep going. The list ranks every round from loudest to quietest; Clear rounds starts a new contest.
How the shouts are scored
Each round keeps its LAFmax, the highest A-weighted level with the Fast (125 ms) time weighting of the sound level meter standard IEC 61672-1. A-weighting counts sound roughly the way ears do, and the Fast response is quick enough to catch a one-second shout, so the longest, fullest shout wins rather than a sharp clap. Next to it the list shows the LCpeak, the highest instant with C-weighting, which is how Guinness World Records now measures shouting records.
For a sense of scale, ISO 9921 puts normal speech at about 60 dB(A) 1 m from the mouth, a loud voice at 72 and a very loud one at 78; its withdrawn 1996 edition put a shout at 84 and a maximum shout at 90 dB(A). A phone set to the default offset can read a few decibels off, but because everyone shouts at the same microphone from the same spot, the ranking is fair even without calibration.
When the numbers stop making sense
If several people get exactly the same score, or the page says the microphone is clipping, the shouts are louder than the microphone can take: step further back and start again. Background noise matters too; a contest in a noisy room rewards whoever shouts during a lull, so wait for quiet between rounds.
How this page is set up
This is the same meter as the standard decibel meter, opened with different settings. You can change any of them while it runs, and your calibration works on every page.
| Setting | This page | Standard meter |
|---|---|---|
| Loudest-shout rounds | Yes: LAFmax and LCpeak per round, best first | No |